Metadata

Reto Stauffer

Given mode and the resource_id are known (see gs_datasets()) the function gs_metadata() allows to retrieve meta information which provides which stations and parameters are available for this specific data set.

library("gsdata")

# Meta information for historical hourly synop observations
meta <- gs_metadata(mode = "historical", resource_id = "synop-v1-1h")

The function returns a named list with a series of information about the data set (e.g., title, frequency, type, …) alongside with two elements stations and parameters explained in this article in more detail.

Station information

Element stations is an object of class c(“sf”, “data.frame”) containing information about available stations for this data set. This includes the name of the station, the geographical location (state, altitude, and coordinates) as well as the station id which is required when retrieving data (see gs_stationdata()).

In addition, the object provides information about the time period data is available (valid_from, valid_to) and whether or not the station is_active.

plot(meta$station["altitude"],
     main = "Station location and altitude",
     pch = 19, cex = 1)

plot(meta$station["is_active"],
     main = "Station status (active/inactive)",
     col = ifelse(meta$station$is_active, "#089392", "#CF597E"),
     pch = ifelse(meta$station$is_active, 19, 17),
     cex = 1)

Parameter information

Element parameters provides a list of all available parameters for this data set. Alongside with the name which is required to retrieve data (see gs_stationdata()) his data.frame also contains a description as well as the unit of the measurements. This is, however, only available in German.

head(meta$parameters, n = 3)

##   name                              long_name
## 1   C1   Wolkenart der tiefsten Wolkenschicht
## 2   C2 Wolkenart der 2.tiefsten Wolkenschicht
## 3   C3 Wolkenart der 3.tiefsten Wolkenschicht
##                                                                    desc
## 1   Wolkenart bzw. Gattung der tiefsten Wolkenschicht (Code Table 0500)
## 2 Wolkenart bzw. Gattung der 2.tiefsten Wolkenschicht (Code Table 0500)
## 3 Wolkenart bzw. Gattung der 3.tiefsten Wolkenschicht (Code Table 0500)
##           unit
## 1 Code (Synop)
## 2 Code (Synop)
## 3 Code (Synop)

Please note that not all stations will provide measurements for all parameters.